How I Stopped "Working Out" and Got In the Best Shape of My Life

I'm the kind of exerciser who sleeps through a morning spin class and bails on post-work gym time around 3 p.m. when I'm already too exhausted or someone offers up happy hour plans. It's not because I don't like working out; it's just that when I don't have the motivation to go to the gym, I'm probably not going to go. And, luckily, I've been able to rely on good genes and a 30-year-old's metabolism to stay pretty slim naturally. When I don't work out, though, it shows — my body looks softer, and I'm edgier around other people. Still, it's been an ongoing struggle to find a way to make myself work out without it feeling like, well, work.

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It was the tiniest trick that finally changed the way I approached fitness and helped me get in the best shape I've been in since high school. Instead of working out, I started training.

Training sounds intense — like you're trying to qualify for the Olympics or something — but it didn't really change anything about my actual fitness routine. My goal was still to exercise three or four times a week. It was more about changing how I approached those workouts.

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Eight weeks ago, I started a Nike program called #UnlimitedYou. With the Olympics coming up, the idea was to help regular people like me learn how to train like an athlete — in my case, I wanted to be a stronger, faster, better runner. To kick off the program, I went with Nike to the Michael Johnson Performance Center in Dallas, TX, where many of the athletes competing in this year's Olympic Games train, for a full fitness assessment. (If you can't fly to Dallas, no worries — you can typically get similar assessments at your local gym; just ask a trainer).

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I had my body fat measured, I had my strength and flexibility tested, I performed plyometric jumps to measure my power and reaction times, I lobbed medicine balls as far as possible without falling on my face to determine my core strength, I sprinted on a treadmill to see how much ground I could cover in 45 seconds, and I pedaled on the spin bike from hell to determine my endurance capacity.

This was incredibly fascinating and a little intimidating. I learned that the annoying, persistent ache in my hip was most likely caused by weak glutes, that I had a super strong aerobic system (as evidenced by my heart rate recovery after three horrible minutes on that spin bike), and that my right leg is a smidge shorter than the other. I left Dallas with a whole bunch of stats, measurements, and numbers.

Courtesy of Nike

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I left with a plan, too: At the end of the eight-program, I would be running a half marathon, and I wanted to run it faster than my last one. To do that, I scheduled a weekly one-on-one strength training session and a one-on-one running session with two Nike Master Trainers. (If you can't get to a one-on-one session with a local trainer, try downloading curated workouts from the ones that work with Nike on the new Nike+ app.)

The whole point of this eight-week program wasn't to "work out." From the minute I stepped into the Michael Johnson Performance Center, I was training. I was an athlete. Semantics, sure, but that little shift in perspective had a huge effective on the way I exercised. Whereas working out was something that could easily be pushed off or forgotten about, training was a necessity if I didn't want to embarrass myself come race day.

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I learned more about fitness in those eight weeks than I did in years of slogging away on the elliptical and doing crunches at the gym. In the past, I avoided weights out of pure laziness. But Joe Holder, a Nike coach and trainer at S10 training, finally got me to lift, which had a huge effect on how strong I felt when I ran. Turns out, I had some serious weaknesses on the back side of my body and major hip tightness. "To combat this, we have to strengthen your glutes while increasing your core control so your pelvis becomes more stabilized," Holder told me. And I needed to work on my power so I could be quicker and more explosive while running.

My warm-ups with Holder focused on opening up my hips and strengthening my core, then I did tons of strength work like pushing and pulling weight sleds (which also helped me accelerate faster while running), stabilization exercises like lunges with a single arm press and renegade rows, plyometric work (like squat jumps) to increase my power, and sprints with resistance bands to condition my anaerobic system (so I could run faster, longer). All of these moves left me sore in ways I'd never felt before, but had a pretty immediate effect on my running — my whole body felt stronger, which made running feel a lot easier no matter the distance.

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Actually running with a coach made me a little self-conscious. When I had previously trained for races, training to me meant walking out my front door and running — no warm-ups, no technique drills, just miles. After watching me, Julia Lucas, a Nike running coach and former pro runner, told me I run like a pole vaulter, with my upper body too tall and behind my center of gravity (which totally slows you down). My number one goal in our sessions was to run more naturally. "Essentially, we're teaching you to embrace running as a controlled fall," Lucas said. "Your intention should be giving in to running — letting yourself run, not making yourself run." We did that through a ton of form drills (A skips, B skips, shuffles, and bounds), each of which targeted and exaggerated a different part of the running stride. The idea was that by drilling these movements into me, they'd become habit when I was actually running.

Being accountable to a trainer for the first time (even if some weeks it was just over email) made a major difference in my workouts. Holder and Lucas guilted me into keeping up my A game; when I was by myself at the gym or in a group fitness class, I was definitely more likely to slack off; when it was just me and a trainer, no chance was I getting away with cheating.

At the end of the eight weeks, we had another fitness assessment with the Michael Johnson Performance Center team in New York. Sure enough, I had improved in all areas.

Courtesy of Nike

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My trainers explained all my new numbers in detail. "You got stronger but also more powerful," Holder told me. "As an example, you dropped multiple tenths of seconds in your 0-10 second sprint, which is no small feat! It's important to notice these gains! When you're training like an athlete, a foot or time drop (even of fractions of seconds) is the difference between a gold medal or none at all."

On the running front, I finally nailed a more natural stride. "Your run is now a more open, fluid, childlike movement, which is always the goal in distance running," Lucas explained. "You got more powerful when we moved your center of gravity forward, and you stopped over striding, which can lead to injuries."

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Even better, my fitness results came with some serious body benefits. After two months of training, I was way more toned all over. I could see definition in my abs I'd never noticed before, and I no longer felt like I was going to die after pushing myself through a long run.

Courtesy of Nike

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Numbers aside, I really felt like a better runner — and it only took eight weeks to get there. And that's mostly because of that little shift in perspective. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with working out to work out. And clearly I wasn't training for something seriously hardcore, like the Olympics. But it wasn't until I set a goal and held myself accountable to it that I that I saw real results.

I crushed that half marathon in Vancouver, BTW — it wasn't my fastest race ever and it didn't feel great, but I cut an insane 20 minutes off my time from my previous half. And I ended the race knowing that whatever my time, I had seriously worked my ass off to get across that finish line. Now, on to the next goal!

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